


Chapter Zero: The Big Sleep

by amythis



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-22
Updated: 2019-04-22
Packaged: 2020-01-23 17:46:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18554719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amythis/pseuds/amythis
Summary: Jughead wonders if he should wake his best friends to the truth or just let it lie.





	Chapter Zero: The Big Sleep

**Author's Note:**

> After enjoying Season One, I couldn't make it past the first few episodes of Season Two, so my apologies if later episodes contradict this prequel.

I love sleep. Not as much as I love food, but it is free and, except for the nightmares, generally enjoyable.

I live in what people describe as a sleepy little town. Nothing much happens here, at least on the calm surface.

I sleep at the movies. Not just dozing during double features, but sleeping in the projection booth at the drive-in where I work. (The Twilight Drive-in, named long before vampires sparkled. Twilight is half light, half dark, as well as a synonym for ambiguity.)

I haven't slept at home since my mom and sister moved out of our trailer and Dad's drinking got even worse. (The trailer park is on the South Side and named Sunnyside. I don't think I have to explain the verbal irony of that.)

Sometimes my dreams are like movies, both Technicolor and sepia tone. Sometimes my life feels like sleepwalking and my eyelids barely open. And sometimes I wake up and don't know what's real.

Yes, I have "those kinds of dreams," although my sexual awakening has been hazier than my best friend's. Even when he was Li'l Archie, he liked girls, definitively. I thought girls were an annoyance, except sometimes his neighbor. Betty Cooper was a ponytailed tomboy that Archie mostly treated as an honorary boy, so I sometimes did, too. We were both Archie's best friends, but in a non-competitive way. I didn't want what Betty wanted from him.

When the Kellers moved to town, Kevin became her "gay best friend," so she had someone she could talk about boys with, besides her shy older sister. Polly knew Betty liked Archie as more than a friend, but I know that Kevin was the one who never got tired of her gushing.

I knew about her crush, but we never talked about it. It would've been awkward, and anyway I'm not known for being interested in romance, even in a gossipy way, like Cheryl Blossom.

I didn't like girls and I didn't like boys. I didn't know if I was a late bloomer emotionally and physically, or if I would always be asexual and/or aromantic. I had more important things to worry about.

Even as puberty settled in and Archie got more girl-crazy, Kevin more boy-crazy, and Betty more Archie-crazy, I just thought they were all crazy. And then, late in freshman year, my dreams in the night and day found a focus I wasn't ready for.

I guess the biggest surprise is that I, the snarky rebel, the weirdo in the beanie, have fallen for the girl next door and it's not even my door. Betty Cooper is a perfect girl from a perfect family. She's sweet, beautiful, and smart, if naive. She is the approachable and yet unattainable blonde in a Hitchcock mystery. The crush makes perfect sense, which is why it makes no sense.

I'm not sure when it started or even when I woke to the realization. Maybe it was the day she brought a cake she made in Home Ec to the cafeteria. Archie thanked her but said he had to start training for football, while I ate it all, down to the crumbs. Maybe it was one of those countless other moments when he took her for granted.

The funny thing is, I have no doubt he loves her, just not in that way. That's not to say he may never finally notice her the way she hopes he will, but for now I've been letting sleeping dogs lie. I don't nudge her to tell him how she feels, like I'm sure Kevin does. I just let it all play out like a movie, one with only two possible endings.

Or so I thought. But now that I've got all these feelings of my own, do I just try to hide them, like she does? After all, even if she weren't crushing hard on our mutual best friend, what do I have to offer her? I don't even have a door anymore. We have nothing in common, other than Archie, and it would be very weird to build a relationship around that.

It's not that we never spend time together without Archie, but it usually is the three of us. I sort of wish it could go on like that forever, but I know that things change. They must change or they stagnate.

In a way, it'd be easier if Archie returned her feelings. I'd know I should keep silent about my own feelings. Sometimes I want to just ask him if she has a chance with him, whether or not I have a chance with her. Just so I could know, but it would seem really strange coming from me.

Archie and I are going to take a road trip by bus in a week, over the Fourth of July weekend. Maybe I'll get up the courage to ask what he thinks of Betty, not even necessarily if he wants to sleep with her, but just whether he still thinks of her as an honorary boy.

I don't know if I want to sleep with her. Yes, sometimes when I'm asleep I want that, but I also dream about Lauren Bacall (whose nickname was Betty) and that's obviously not a conscious goal. When I let myself daydream about Betty Cooper, it's all these sweet little gestures, like soft kisses and handholding. I would take it slow with her and wait until we were both ready to make it more physical.

I know, I'm dreaming. Nothing will happen with her. I'll probably never tell her, or confide in Archie. The three of us will drift along as we are until we graduate Riverdale High.

I remember now when I first consciously fell for her. It was at school and she was blushing because the English teacher read aloud her A+ essay on all the references to bed, sleep, and dreams in _Romeo and Juliet._ Reggie Mantle loudly whispered a typical dudebro comment and Archie chivalrously told Reggie to shut his face. And I couldn't take my wide-open eyes off Betty until I got caught up in a daydream where I'd take a ladder to her bedroom window. Maybe I'd have a boombox like in _Say Anything_ or _Easy A_ and I'd play the song "Hey Juliet." And then I started questioning the logistics of that, like how I'd climb with a boombox and whether I'd have to borrow a ladder from Archie or drag the one from the drive-in halfway across town, maybe on the bus.

I don't know how to do romance, but maybe I could learn. Meanwhile I need to sleep on this.


End file.
